September 2011
10 posts
9 tags
Man Fist Surprise. (It's Not What You Think).
You’ve decided to follow this dumb blog and now you’re gonna pay for it, starting with this brief tale: I grew this tomato, from seed, and ate it for breakfast this morning.
I’m no hero for doing it, just stating the facts. It’s bruised, looks like it may have lost a fight to a stray cat, but when I had Gordon Ramsay slice it and plate it up it looked pretty damn good,...
5 tags
Seasonal Urges
Despite my seasonal urge to put on a turtleneck sweater, drink a gallon of cider and eat my weight in fresh donuts, it’s still summertime warm here in NYC. I’m finding this emotionally confusing but my garden seems to know the score. The sun is fading and my newly planted greens are really only just starting to sluggishly sprout in the shadow of pre-existing Swiss chard.
These...
4 tags
Little Donkey Farm
Everytime I read something from NPR I like to think a little bit of Rush Limbaugh dies. So I do it as much as humanly possible, reading about all the things that get lefties revved up. You know, like the occupation of Wall Street, the arts (pronounced ahhhhhts) and Chinese community supported agriculture.
According NPR, 20% of the world’s food comes from China, where large-scale industrial...
6 tags
The Great Dumb Adventure
Saying I appreciate nature because I grow plants on my roof is like saying I can appreciate what it’s like to fight in combat because I play Call of Duty. I happen to both garden and play Call of Duty. Big deal. Point is, to really understand nature you need to experience it, immerse yourself in it, and even expose yourself… to its dangers.
After last year’s venture into...
6 tags
Vinegar Hill
I bombed around one of my favorite secret hoods in Brooklyn, the tiny enclave of Vinegar Hill, reputed childhood home of Al Capone. Over-sized smokestacks and warehouses dwarf this place, but its old parts stand unchanged.
There’s no vinegar to be found and I’m not even sure it’s on a hill, but it does have one of my favorite gardens, complete with bathtub tomatoes and a huge...
3 tags
Detroit Garden City?
Last year we pulled out an old photo of my grandfather’s childhood home in Detroit. Written in pencil on the back was the street address. We promptly plugged into Google Maps and strolled the old neighborhood via the handy street view which showed us a different picture. The cute house was gone, a rough-looking apartment building in its place. The block had more stray mattresses than...
6 tags
Fall Gardening: Not Just About Wet Leaves and...
Clear the decks, it’s fall planting time. Forget all about that record-breaking rainfall that exploded your precious heirloom tomatoes. Let go of the fantasy that you’ll inundate your neighbors and co-workers with your “extra”, jealousy-inducing produce. I know, those broken branches are brutal to look at. But you just gotta get over it. This season was kinda rough and...
5 tags
If We Don't Garden, The Terrorists Win
On orders from Mayor Bloomberg himself I went about my day as I normally would have, despite the half-serious threat of another terror attack. We were basically being told to think about terrorism on the one day that it’s all anyone’s thinking about anyway.
All weekend the evening sky was lit up with a simple, stark reminder of what went down 10 years back: those two white beams of...
5 tags
There Goes the Dirt
My pal Isaac who promised me a boat ride around Manhattan with an Albanian, brought something far more useful to my attention than false promises: an alternate revenue plan for Panthy’s Garden should it start to operate at a net loss. PS: it’s been operating at a net loss since the day it opened. THANKS A LOT SQUIRRELS.
Isaac holding two giant bags worth of false promises.
...
4 tags
Sweet Gowanus Patch
I cruised by a long-adored patch of sweet garden goodness by the Gowanus Canal today. It’s looking sharper than ever.
Just over the Union Street drawbridge, Kirstin Tobiasson’s garden thrives in a small sidewalk plot liberated from the concrete with rock bars and elbow grease.
Nine years deep, the garden was hatched with no prior gardening experience, according a the New York Times...
